Porn and ESP, together at last

Now if this isn't a near perfect combination of topics to attract my attention, I don't know what is. Scientists are Cornell University have been using porn as part of an experiment to see whether subjects had any ability to predict future events. Simply they had to predict whether a blank screen or a porn image was about to appear on a screen in front of them. They achieved a 'statistically significant' result of 53.1% – which obviously doesn't sound like very much, but the point about 'statistically significant' is that it means there have been enough experiments that it would be staggeringly unlikely that this would just be happening by chance.

This may seem pretty bizarre, but experimenting with porn makes sense to me. The 'traditional' experiment for testing esp was through the use of Zener Cards – which are, lets face it, pretty dull. I have always thought that if a person is going to be able to 'pick up' on a future event psychically they are much more likely to pick up on an event with some emotional significance to them, rather than whether they are about to see a circle or a star. Seeing pornography tends to induce an emotional reaction, so I would expect that it would be easier to 'sense' that event coming rather than the turning of a dull black and white card.

A couple of years back I went to a talk at Treadwell's by the parapsychologist David Luke. He was essentially comparing the results of parapsychologist research to the expectations that an experienced magickian might have (and what do you know they agree – issues like lust for results, personal responsibility and expectation, all turn up in parapsychology in much the same way that a magickian would expect). One of the things that struck me about this talk, however, was the fact that parapsychologists have been using a scientific method and getting results that 'prove' the existence of psychic phenomena for years. Yet skeptical scientists continue to ask 'if it's real, where is the proof?' Parapsychologists are going 'Look, it's right here!' But skeptics will reply with 'Yes, but where is the credible proof?' The issue being, of course, if you choose to be a parapsychologist you lose all of your scientific credibility and your results are not to be trusted.

Such a state of things would really have annoyed me in years gone by, but now I tend to accept that it is just the nature of things magickal and weirdshit. It's almost like they aren't meant (at some level) to be generally known, accepted and believed. They need to have some manner of occult quality, as that is their nature and their function. The journey into spirituality is a path into the weird, freaky and non-conventional that will challenge many of the commonly accepted 'rules' of how most people think reality works. That journey seems to be part of the initiation.

However, if you ever get the chance to see David Luke speak I'd highly recommend it – he's got a great deal of interesting things to say on the state of parapsychology and what the results reveal about reality.